Economy growing at 3-5% in the US. Rich people's wealth growing at a far higher rate. Which means the middle class wealth is getting siphoned to the rich. The middle class is getting poorer and we can all see that.
> Which is exactly the same as "my wealth was constant and my neighbor's grew"
> Which is exactly the same as "my neighbor's the same and my wealth decreased
No, not even remotely true. This is a fixed sum view of wealth that assumes the only way to obtain wealth is to take it from someone else.
Say I have a 3,000 sq ft house on a quarter acre lot, and so does my neighbor. My neighbor's company has a successful IPO and he sells his equity to buy a 6,000 sq ft house on a half acre lot, then how has my wealth decreased?
If you have no raise and your neighbor have a raise, then you are poorer
It may be easier to understand globally: if you have no raise but everybody have a raise, then you are poorer (because everything cost more, but you have no raise)
> If you have no raise and your neighbor have a raise, then you are poorer
This is just factually wrong. If my neighbor gets a raise and I don't, and stuff costs the same amount then I have not gotten poorer. If my neighbor doubled his income tomorrow, how would I be any poorer? In theory, you could argue that his higher income results in inflation, but that's only the case if total productivity doesn't match the increase in the money supply.
Wealth is not zero sum: inflation adjusted wealth has increased over time: more houses and cars get built, more advanced industries increase productivity, etc. Wealth is not a fixed pie, the total amount of wealth in the world increases.
It's not just about logic, it's about data. The middle class is becoming impoverished and increasingly more precarious while the wealthiest are capturing ever larger gains.
Capitalists earn money through control of capital. They're actually parasites that extract all the labour and value from others below them in the system. Capital is taxed lower than labour in most developed countries, at every turn capital is advantaged at the expense of living beings. There is no positive morality in this system of mass impoverishment.
I think we should put this to the test. The working class stops working for a week/month and we'll see how "productive" the rich capitalists really are.
No, that logic doesn't follow. Say my wealth grew by 3% and my neighbor's grew by 5%. That doesn't imply any sort of "siphoning" at play.